How To Remove a School Levy: Taking tax money back from the schools

The Cincinnati Enquirer recently announced that Lakota Schools had lost nearly half of all their school principals due to the financial struggles of three failed school levies. These Lakota principals have jumped off the ship citing upon their exit that they are uncertain about their financial futures and are either retiring or seeking employment elsewhere. That information is of course contrary to what they say in school levy campaigns, which is that everything they do is for the children. The mass exodus of these administrators to school districts they believe will continue their premium salaries and benefits should be an insult to the surrounding schools, and reveals what the true feelings are from these school employees. Administrators are essentially saying that they would rather leave behind the children who count on them because the district is attempting to solve their financial difficulties in favor of districts that are still throwing money at their public employees like there is no tomorrow.

http://westchesterbuzz.com/2012/06/21/lakota-losing-principals-at-high-rate/

One of the downsides to the Lakota School District deciding not to put a levy on the ballot in 2012 is that I will not get to attempt what the taxpayers in the Westerville School District are doing. For many years, those of us who have fought against tax increases have felt like victims of an organized political plot arranged between local politicians on school boards, and the radical teachers unions who have created for themselves gold plated benefits and wages at the expense of the tax payer. I have often complained that the average wage for the Lakota employee is $63K per year, but in Westerville, in Central Ohio, their average wage is $65K per year and trending towards $80,000 by the 2014/2015 school years. The spending was not stopped at Westerville as it was at Lakota because voters there approved by a narrow margin a 51% to 49% passage of a 6.71 mil tax.

See video of the repeal move against this levy at this link: http://vp.mgnetwork.net/viewer.swf?u=9ad6b34aea08102f8fb5001ec92a4a0d&z=OHV&embed_player=1

Usually, the story ends there, as it did recently in Southern Ohio in districts like Fairfield, Lebanon, and Little Miami who barely passed their tax levies with the help of huge apartment dweller votes, and serious organized labor rhetoric. Many voters once they approve for levy passage and see how the schools spent the money on teacher raises and other employee costs often regret their decision. And that’s what’s happening in Westerville.

With the help of the 1851 Center as their legal representation tax fighters have began to collect signatures to place on the ballot a roll back of that recently approved levy which is a tremendous act. Westerville is doing what all school districts who fight higher taxes are doing, and that is utilize the philosophy of the “best defense is a great offense.” Don’t wait for the radical union elements to push for further tax increases. Go after the tax increases already wrestled and manipulated by the educrats in organized labor, and rob it back to give to the tax payers who had it stolen to begin with. Such a move means that no longer on Election Day can organized labor put levy after levy on a ballot till it passes, then roll their naked bodies in the piles of money once they’ve legally stolen it without recourse. The 1851 Center led by Maurice Thompson has revealed a little known section of Ohio Revised Code that makes what Westerville is doing possible for every school district in Ohio who has suffered a similar fate. Read more about Westerville here:

http://www.ohioconstitution.org/2012/05/07/westerville-taxpayers-move-to-repeal-march-tax-increase/

I had a chance recently to speak with Maurice Thomson for a bit and he let me know that a few Southern Ohio tax fighters had contacted him but did not follow through, and he was still waiting to hear from them. I was surprised because I know the people involved and it seemed like the kind of thing that they would pounce on. Thompson is the Executive Director at the 1851 Center and directed the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions. Previously Thompson served as an attorney for the Sam Adams Foundation in Chicago and practiced privately in Ohio and Illinois. His legal fees on these education matters are free. He has successfully litigated cases in the Supreme Court of Ohio as well as intermediate courts of appeal and courts of common pleas throughout Ohio on issues such as property rights, regulation taxation, corporate welfare, search and seizures and smoking bans. He’s also the author of Presuming Liberty: Using Ohio’s Constitution to Limit Government, Defending Liberty in Ohio: A Roadmap for Protecting Freedom and Limiting Government with the State Constitution, and he wrote the forward for the current pocket copy of Ohio’s Constitution. You can contact Thompson at the following website:

http://www.ohioconstitution.org/

Maurice Thompson has actually written a citizens guide to reducing school district tax burden that can be found at the 1851 Center site. Basically, what Thompson is advocating is that there is a very little utilized R.C. 5705 and R.C. 5748 that allows tax payers to reduce or eliminate most types of school district property and income taxes enacted through local levy elections. Specifically it is R.C. 5705.261 that permits Ohioans to use local initiatives to win the reduction or repeal of qualifying tax levies. Some of the rules for reduce or repeal of a tax is the voters must have approved the levy. The levy must not expire, and there can only be one attempt every five years. Read it for yourself here:

http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/5705.261

So for those who want to attempt this, be sure to take a page out of the union playbook and collect the ballot signatures during the summer while all the school employees are on their Caribbean cruises and vacationing at Disney World so that they can’t match your signatures with an attempt of their own to reduce their own levies with a ballot attempt of .000001 mil just to keep residents from being able to strike back at them, since another attempt would have to wait 5 years before trying again.

The sum of these matters is this—tax payers do not have to be passive victims always waiting for a school district to attack them with never ending tax increases. There are measures right now in place to strike back at the labor union methods of placing levy after levy, after levy on a ballot until it passes—then attempting to put it on in the summer like they did in Pickerington to stack the votes in favor of the school employees since school was off everyone’s mind. That district finally passed their levy after several attempts. Lawyers at the 1851 Center like Maurice Thompson are licking their chops for an opportunity to help right the wrongs that are going on in Ohio Schools at the expense of children for the gain of extremely self centered public employees who are out-of-touch and just plain greedy. But people have to call them, and let them help. Tax fighters have to be willing to collect signatures, but most of the people I know who fight these things have done all this activity before, so it isn’t difficult. I plan to call Maurice if Lakota ever manages to sneak one by in my district. But for those who have had them sneak by, like Lebanon, like Fairfield, like Forest Hills, like Little Miami, I recommend you call Maurice today and begin the process of removing those levies and showing the school boards that the tax payers of your districts are not going to take it.

We do not have to sit around waiting for school districts to keep pushing and pushing and pushing a tax until they get it passed, forcing taxpayers to just endure the higher tax grudgingly for the next 4 to 5 years until they try to raise taxes again in order to pay for the extraordinary salaries of their public employees. Now taxpayers can strike back, and do so in a huge way. And the way is being paved in Westerville with the help of Maurice Thompson at the 1851 Center. The wave of the future is not in tax increases initiated by bloated school districts but in the removal of them by the citizens who refuse to take the initiatives lying down. Such vigilance is the best way to bring fiscal responsibility to school districts by forcing changes that the schools will not enact upon themselves because of the radicalism of the unions that infect them.

As for Lakota, they will learn that they can succeed quite well without those middle manager principals, and that all along many of those administrators were just useless positions that could easily have been picked up by the assistant principals or a promoted teacher. The urgency at Lakota is only because the residents have taken the effort to manage our costs by saying no to tax increases. But for the other districts around Ohio who have been unfortunate in having taxes raised behind their backs after intense struggles—such as Little Miami who put their levy on the ballot 9 times—there is now a tool that tax payers can use to shut down those levy increases so that there will soon be no place for the bandits to escape to, forcing them as public employees to deal with the facts of reality.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Holder Found in Contempt of Congress: Now it’s in John Boehner’s court

Eric Holder has been found in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the documents Darrell Issa demanded. Holder attempted to do the same type of evasion that we saw from Bill Clinton in relation to Kenneth Starr, and Richard Nixon over Watergate by turning in only 5% of the documents listed in the subpoena. Then before the vote over contempt Holder asked Obama to grant executive privilege so the documents could stay in their possession.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/house-oversight-committee-votes-to-hold-eric-holder-in-contempt-in-fast-and-furious-investigation/

This is an epic coverup that is very consistent with the Chicago mob style administration that Obama has brought to America in his four years of rule. These are guilty, bad people and they deserve to feel the complete weight of the law. If they do not, then the law means nothing. Now this issue is in the hands of my congressman, John Boehner. In January I asked Mr. Boehner to proceed with the impeachment of President Obama for unrelated issues, CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW. Now, it is time to deal with these criminals, so I hope that my congressman Speaker Boehner will forget about the smear tactics that those who are guilty in this Fast and Furious case will be brought to justice and the long view of history will be kept in perspective. It’s time to do what should have been done many times in the past, and raise the bar of expectation that will once again bring some measure of respect for our government offices, and take the reigns of power from those activists who currently attempt to shape the law to their leisure.

And to call Obama and his employees criminals is not right-winged rhetoric designed to win an election. It’s simply speaking the truth.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Art of Water: Giving mother nature the middle finger

One of the great things about summer are the kind of days I just recently had where I spent the entire day swimming in my back yard as storms rolled through sporadically. The diversity of a hot steamy day from the vantage point of a Jacuzzi watching the clouds roll in swiftly overhead then experiencing the sudden 20 degree drops in temperature as the rain comes through blotting out the sunlight and within moments all signs of a blue sky are gone is invigorating.

During these some of these sudden downpours while the lighting streaked across the sky I would step out of my hot tub and jump into the cold water of my pool. The hot tub is approximately 102 degrees so sweat was pouring off my face. The rain was cold but not nearly as frigid as the 72 degree water. Jumping suddenly into such wild temperature fluctuations from the hot tub to the cold pool water are how I have spent many of my summers for over a decade. When I have those rare days where not much is expected out of my time, that’s how I enjoy spending it.

This year I had to do major structural work on my pool so after two months of rather extensive work, I finally have it back up and running just two weeks after the normal Memorial Day weekend openings. There were times during this major overhaul that I wondered if it would ever function again.

My wife has planted some rather extensive vegetation around our pool, so when swimming in the heat of the summer it reminds me of a bizarre tropical rain forest, especially when the rain comes down hard. Anytime in the summer when big storms come through I make a point to go swimming. There is something primal and necessary in the task that I find endlessly refreshing. With my body temperature over 100 degrees from the hot tub and only cooling off a little in the pouring rain, the sudden cold water of the pool has a tendency to quickly contract the surface of the skin in response.

But on this particular day in this particular storm there was added meaning. The pool water since I had to do such a major overhaul was all new. Not a single human being had been in the water before my leap into it during the ravishing storm. And not an ounce of chemical had been added yet. The water was pure, straight from the facet that was nearly as pure as the water falling out of the sky during. Water like that has a particular texture as you push your hands through it and when you dive underneath it is crystal clear. It’s fascinating to be under the water and feel the rumble of thunder outside and see the rain pelting the surface of the pool from under the water, then to resurface and see that the stormy winds are knocking around all the trees and kicking up the vegetation.

After my body cooled down to well below its normal body temperature I then went back to the hot tub and sat in it for another hour. In my duration there another storm came and went then I returned back to the pool for another 30 minutes of swimming. My wife kept a clear glass of water filled on the side of the pool for me to drink. Each time I passed by it I noticed how clear the liquid was and the ice cubes inside had a particular luster exhibiting luxury in a perverse way.

The trees around the pool looked majestic from inside the water. They loom up and over the pool just as my wife designed them to, giving the feeling of an eddy along a tributary of the Amazon, only without the dirty water or the piranhas. There just aren’t many places in the world where these things go together and are only the result of manmade creations. Watering holes like my pool do not exist in nature. The fact that you can walk in it without getting your feet dirty in the mud of a pond or river makes the experience truly soothing. The filtration system keeps the water crystal clear and scoops up the leaves from all the trees around the pool before they have a chance to sink to the bottom. That’s when it occurred to me that it is the filtration system that makes the unique experience of my pool so unique.

I’ve been on rafting trips and spelunking voyages where you crawl through the mud and water on your belly for yards as you freeze from being deep inside a cave and it’s very uncomfortable. Trees often grow along the sides of rivers, but in nature I never enjoy them quite the same as in my pool. You can never totally relax in the wild. It seems like you’re either always sweaty and dirty and the water of a river has all the garbage from everything that’s upstream. But after a hard day of hiking, it always feels nice to fill up your hat and pour it over your head to cool off.

My family and I have been a lot of places, and seen a lot of things, some of them quite startling. So I know the difference, and there is a time and place for adventure. I often ride my motorcycle in the hardest of winters, even when there is snow on the ground. And I’ve done and seen about everything there is to do outside in just about every condition it could be presented in. But there is nothing like a clean pool that has only had your body in it that is cleaned by a filter that you maintain that is in your back yard.

It’s a similar sensation as to why hot dogs on a back yard grill taste so good even though they are the same hot dogs that you can buy anywhere. It’s because the hot dog on the grill is the product of your private property. Your grill, your hot dogs, your back yard, cooked by your spouse—the operative word is in “Your.” There is a lot to be said about ownership, and those who do not have ownership are missing out on one of life’s great treasures. This is why when someone invites you over to grill out, they are so thrilled, but the food to the visitor just tastes normal. They are feeling the result of their property, while to the visitor; it’s just another hot dog.

My wife and I enjoy the Kings Island water park, but it’s never as fun as the pool in our own back yard. I always come away from the water park feeling dirty, and looking for a way to take a shower. I can enjoy the experience, but it’s never as refreshing. Even though the water in my pool has been swirling around the planet since the beginning of time, it has been in oceans, lakes, rivers and been drank by all types of animals even dinosaurs at some point in time. But the water that falls from the sky in the violent summer storms is as clean as it gets on earth, and I love to see it fall from the sky and bounce off my chest and run into my pool which is controlled and cleaned by me.

Most people would complain that the trees around my pool put too many leaves back into the water, but I don’t mind. It’s worth the extra cleaning to have the sharp contrasts, to have the diversified foliage mixed with the clean water, just as I enjoy the contrast of the hot Jacuzzi water with the cold pool water. The extremes are healthy and actually refreshing so long as they occur within the context of ownership.

As I swam in the storm and enjoyed the water most of the day, I thought of all the people in my life who told me that I should not swim when there is lightning flashing across the sky because it’s dangerous. I pity such people because they cling so resolutely to living when their form of living is just a fraction of life’s potential. If I could, I’d teach everyone in America to enjoy such afternoons of swimming in the summer storms, but that would require a majority of Americans to drop communism as an option, to drop the community pool with the dirty sidewalks and urine in the water, and give up apartment living. They’d have to buy their own homes and do what it takes to purchase property and maintain it. Then they could enjoy the food from their very own grill while they soak in their very own hot tub, and swim in their very own pool, because that is the way life is supposed to be in America. And it can be that way for everyone. All that’s required is context, and ownership, and the treasures of a person’s own back yard can eclipse years of adventures all over the planet which are always secondary in their fulfillment. I have done it all and seen it all, and there simply isn’t anything better than that moment when I get to jump in my clean pool after soaking in the hot tub for over an hour while heavy rain pours from the sky. It is an experience that the whole world should be able to realize at least for a portion of their lives, because within those simple actions are the highest aims in human existence—ownership and command over one’s destiny even as we mock the danger of Mother Nature by swimming in a pool of water while the jealous bitch hurls lighting down upon us. That’s when I love to swim on my back and give the good old middle finger to the angry clouds as they pass over head urging me to run for safety. No—it’s my pool and my time, and I will do with it what I please, in spite of what Mother Nature decides to do in protest.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Tea Party and Me: Politicians only have themselves to blame–“No They Can’t”

Just a bit of a disclaimer—I hope it wasn’t thought that because the Lakota Levy attempt of 2012 has been called off, and it would seem that the school district is going to take measures to solve some of their financial problems, that I was just going to go away. Maybe the belief was that I would just go swimming, or do cartwheels in my back yard, because that is not my plan. There have long been issues regarding local politics that I simply couldn’t get to because the Lakota information consumed so much of my time. Well, not anymore.

I have seen the spike in hits here at Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom no doubt from many of my political enemies around town who thought I might take a break as they looked at my latest article about the West Chester trustees. I thought I’d take the time to address them before their imaginations get away from them. When it comes to my involvement with the Tea Parties around town it is true that I do support them. But when it comes to the politics of the Tea Parties, we have many differences, so my relationship is not one where I take marching orders from any group of Tea Partiers. If my articles seem to be motivated by Tea Party ideology it is where I am on common ground with them that those articles reflect. Much of the Tea Party movement is simply dedicated to educating the public and peaceful protest of big expensive government. Their danger to the political process is that those who have been playing games in broad daylight with tax payer resources now have a group to fear who intends to expose those acts in pursuit of fiscal responsibility, and they have a right to do so. That is called, “management” of financial resources. Actually, they have an obligation to do so.

Regarding Catherine Stoker and Lee Wong, I’m sure they think it’s unfair to be at the center of these investigations, but they are public servants—with “servants” being the operative word. They are not part of any political class of rulers, as much as they might pretend to be amongst themselves.

Where I differ from most of the Tea Party members is many are just a bit too far to the political left for me. Many of them that I know quite well I disagree with their desire to even play politics with some of the obvious instances of corruption that are openly known, and if I had it my way, there would be much harsher treatment of those crimes than just exposing the stories with the light of awareness. While many might consider me a radical right-wing advocate, from my point of view that’s only because they are so far to the left they have lost perspective. The Tea Party members I know are good people who still believe in the system of government we have now, and they wish to work within that system to tweak the republic back into some sense of honesty, which I think is a noble cause, and I support if it’s possible.

Personally, I don’t see hope in such a process. I think the bad guys should be rounded up and confronted directly and left to fate to determine the result. I have no desire to play patty-cake with bad guys and to me, a politician who openly lies and manipulates a situation—even a minor one so that they might personally advance their positions are bad guys and gals and I have no tolerance for it. None.

I have nothing personal against Lee Wong, but he got caught manipulating “the system” to his advantage over the Eagleridge crosswalk. Lee’s wife is on the board of the Beckett Ridge Homeowners association and it is very obvious by the mountains of evidence that Lee worked with Cathy Stoker to get a crosswalk put in for personal use at the expense of the tax payers. It was a feather in everyone’s cap and they used a disabled person to advance the cause, and it was wrong.

I started watching the West Chester trustees and their actions more closely because of the comments by Stoker in the Enquirer article against me where she jumped on the band wagon to attack me, so I have been looking to return the favor. Why she felt she should include herself in the obvious school levy campaign against me indicates guilt to some extent, so it drew my attention to her activities. When I saw how the two of them treated, and disrespected Trustee Lang, who I do personally like, I took offense to their behavior. To watch in the videos how Trustee Lee became so defensive and attacked Lang as being “unethical” really pissed me off to put it mildly. It reminded me of how this same group of politicians attempted to paint me as a “woman hater” in the Cincinnati Enquirer because they could not answer the questions about school funding that I brought up. It’s an old political trick where something you do is taken out of context and twisted around by a political enemy to mount peer pressure against the provoker. In my case it was a blog posting were I blasted a select group of levy supporters in a negative way once I discovered they were protesting against me outside of the local Kroger grocery store. For Lang he went through a trial a few years back and Lee attempted to shut Lang down in their spirited debate with that bad memory because Lee was trying to cover up the collusion he had been doing to have the crosswalk built. And believe me; I understand what Lang went through. It’s partly because of it that I am happy to say he’s one of the few politicians I respect.

So Cathy and Lee only have themselves to blame for the attention that is headed their way. I wouldn’t have been looking too closely if Cathy didn’t make herself part of my personal story and Lee obviously does not have a working relationship with a person I respect in Mr. Lang. So they can be angry at the West Chester Tea Party for paying close attention to the happenings in their community and questioning the way funds are allocated. They can send the zoning people over to harass the Grand Ole Pub because it’s no secret that they have been hosting the West Chester Tea Party social gatherings, although I wouldn’t say the owner is a radical right winged guy, just a lover of American nostalgia. And they can consult their advisors about how to proceed next. But they only have one person to blame for the attention that is coming their way—themselves. The kind of political games I witnessed over the Eagleridge crosswalk is exactly the kind of thing that has virtually destroyed America, and to ignore it is wrong. Without question Stoker and Wong believe they were doing the right thing for the community, so they saw no harm in undermining the political process by initiating the allocation of funding 6 weeks before the issue was even brought to the board and Wong had his neighbor initiate the deal before the trustees so it would be recorded in the public minutes of the meeting officially. The trick from Cathy Stoker to sucker Lang into agreeing to hear the testimony at the conclusion of the meeting only to have it used against Lang weeks later as a way to say the project is already done and he agreed to it is underhanded at best, and represents bad politics in the purest way. It is not the job of these politicians to “rule” on our behalf as political elites, and that’s how these trustees behaved, and it deserves to be exposed.

To be angry at Lang, or the West Chester Tea Party—or any other affiliate is misdirected. Collusion in politics costs a lot of money, and years of that type of behavior has bankrupted our nation, and we have an obligation to fix it when we see it. So a note to the politicians reading this—you better get with the program. You can try to suck up to the local Tea Party groups all you want, but know this; I don’t work for them, or anybody. If I see bad things going on, I will expose it here for the world to see since our newspapers won’t do the task themselves. And I won’t stop until there are no more bad deeds going on in politics. It’s that simple. So choose your next moves carefully, and decide best how to serve your community. Because the methods of the past will not work in the future–the Tea Party wants to work with you to make a better world. I simply want to put every bad politician out of business and eliminate their job completely so we can all be free of them. Shaking hands does not achieve that for me. But life as it was will not be possible.

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This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The West Chester Township Trustees Play the Shell Game: Meet the pinball of Beckett Ridge

Step right up—gather around—the West Chester Township Trustees of Ohio under the presidential leadership of Catherine Stoker and initiated by Lee Wong are giving away $4,690.00 to anyone who can claim they have been hit by a car at intersections like the one at the corner of Eagleridge Drive and Eaglet in the community of Beckett Ridge. If an example of why government fails time and time again at all levels requires proof, the new crosswalk which now crosses Eagleridge Drive is the perfect example. It shows how good intentions end up consuming tax payer resources because the parties involved are functioning from a failed philosophy of collectivism as opposed to individualism. In the case described below it would appear that Trustee Lee Wong colluded with a Mr. Cho to arrange before a West Chester Trustee meeting to have a crosswalk built at tax payer expense and Trustee Stoker was in agreement. The two trustees used the West Chester Township meeting simply as a formality to play out their intentions and within 19 business days the concrete was poured and the lines painted for yet another cross walk in the community of West Chester. The Township paid Jackson Construction, Inc., $4,690.00 for the job.

The problem with projects like this crosswalk is that no matter how it’s looked at from any angle, whether it is from the politicians, the residents, the taxpayers, or to eyes from outside the community the situation appears to be well justified. During the meeting where Mr. Cho made his case to the trustees, he stood before them claiming to be blind from diabetes, desiring to live a full life by being allowed to walk around his community but couldn’t because he is was getting hit by cars all the time. He claimed he could not walk on the grass to arrive at the sidewalk on the west side of Eagleridge for some unknown peril, and that even if he did attempt such a thing the cars driving up and down the road would mow him down without concern. So he asked for speed bumps or some other measure to ensure his “safety.” The suspicion of the entire speech manifested when Mr. Cho showed up late for the public comment portion of the meeting and Trustee Wong personally identified Mr. Cho. Trustee Wong and Stoker then put Trustee Lang on the spot to ask for an exception that Mr. Cho be allowed to speak, which no fair-minded person could turn down. But after Mr. Cho spoke a woman who came with him also took to the podium which according to Trustee Stoker was very unprecedented, yet she encouraged it happily as though she already knew the content of the speech—which of course she did. The woman’s name was Ms. Bentley and she has children who attend Freedom Elementary at the top of Eagleridge which is one of the Lakota Schools in the area that has suffered from the busing cuts made by that school district to cover their extraordinary salaries leaving many children walking to and from school. Ms. Bentley stated that she was worried for the safety of her children—and who can argue that?

After listening to all the comments made by Mr. Cho, Ms. Bentley and Trustee Wong it painted a picture in my mind that Mr. Cho was simply a pinball in the dangerous pinball machine of Beckett Ridge, West Chester. Every time he stepped into the street he was being run down by vigilante motorists. Trustee Wong even stated that at times Mr. Cho had been hit by cars so hard that he ended up on the hoods of the cars that ran him over. As the proceedings went on during that first meeting occurring on April 24th of 2012 it became obvious to me that Trustee Stoker knew all the facts before the meeting even started and simply used the trustee meeting to build official consensus for a project she planned to use later as a bullet point to her work as a trustee. Building a crosswalk is simply too tempting for a politician who can spend $5000 of tax payer money on a blind man like Mr. Cho. Politicians after all must appear to have compassion for members of the community, which I believe Wong and Stoker do, but for all the wrong reasons. The problem here is not the compassion; it’s the obvious attempt by Trustee Wong to use his influence as a trustee to help his friend Mr. Cho with a personal problem that is the responsibility of the private citizen.

There are many options available to Mr. Cho. The street he lives on is a quiet boulevard. He should be able to walk down it with no problem. And when it comes to crossing the perilous Eagleridge Drive I sat at that intersection on my motorcycle during rush hour and counted 7 cars in a 15 minute period. Mr. Cho volunteered to paint the lines on the road himself so he can see well enough to paint; he should be able to cross Eagleridge Drive without any trouble. But then on the other side there would be a problem for Mr. Cho. Eagleridge has a tremendous curb that rises about 4 inches and would require Mr. Cho to step up and over onto the treacherous grass extending a few feet to the sidewalk beyond. God forbid he be forced to walk in the grass, for he might slip and fall, and get a boo-boo upon his elbow. Then he might sue the township for not providing adequate safety for him every time he leaves his home.

When I drive from my home to the Tri County area which is a ten-mile stretch of road I pass no fewer than 10 traffic lights on my way. Most of those traffic lights are the result of situations just like this crosswalk issue where a minority of public speakers came forward and spoke about how dangerous a particular intersection was, then over dramatized the situation for theatrics on behalf of the politicians involved. The politicians looking for easy political points and a pile of tax payer money at their fingertips often can’t resist the temptation to capitalize on such requests and over time, these parasitic politicians have given our society an overly regulated world with stop lights, stop signs, and cross walks at virtually every turn. The situation in Butler County is so extreme that it is now impossible to travel from west to east or east to west intersecting the very long road of By-pass 4 since the engineers of that redeveloped thoroughfare have taken a page from the progressive California playbook in trying to eliminate left turns completely—to save driver side impacts from crashes. The situation is insane on By-pass 4 as a result of pandering politicians and the safety addicts who speak at these public meetings. Little by little, these timid creatures of suburbia destroy the world around them with their requests to be insulated from all danger, which the pandering politicians are more than happy to oblige so they can pat themselves on the back with money they consumed from the public treasury to paint some lines on a road, and pour a little concrete so people like Mr. Cho don’t have to walk in the grass.

The crime here is in the politicians themselves looking to use township money to show off for their neighborhood friends exploiting handicaps so that they can be heroes at the expense of the unfortunate. The deal with Mr. Cho had already been worked out by Mr. Wong and Stoker before the trustee meeting even took place. The speech at the meeting was just the formality of building public consensus. The same behavior goes on in school board meetings where the decisions are already made by the board before the meetings ever take place. The public meetings are only designed to give the illusion of public transparency. That’s what is called in Washington politics a “back room deal.” And nobody ever questions it because it would be political suicide to draw attention to a blind man who simply wants the “freedom” to walk about his community and is just asking the local politicians to help him. But that’s not what is going on. Not only was the political process compromised in the creation of the crosswalk at the corner of Eagleridge and Eaglet by pandering to the few at the expense of the many, but the message to the community itself is wrong. Yet again a few, weak and feeble individuals have been allowed to dictate the shape and pace of our community, using compassion to disguise narcissism. Politicians use the weak and feeble to advance their social status with tax money to do the deed. In government, nothing happens as fast as this crosswalk did. The speed is the indicator that it was Trustee Wong and Trustee Stoker who desired to exploit Mr. Cho so that they could score political points not just with the community at large, but with themselves. Building the crosswalk to them is just the form of social justice that may open the gates of heaven using $5000 of tax payer money to purchase the ticket—and that is why the newest crosswalk in the community of Becket Ridge is one more example of tyranny migrating like a blob across the individual lives of West Chester citizens everywhere who surrendered a subtle freedom they didn’t even know they had till it has been erased forever.

Oh—and for those reading this who think this is like the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing, let me direct your attention to one final fact that reveals the strings of manipulation and who pulls them–the request by Mr. Wong for the crosswalk at Eagleridge and Eaglet in front of the West Chester Trustees took place on April 24th as stated. Yet six weeks prior there was communication with Greg Wilkens of the Butler Country Engineer’s office which said:

Greg, Thank you for the returned call re: crosswalk at Eaglet and Eagleridge, I understand the situation.

I asked Tim Franck to contact Matt and see what a crosswalk would look like with all its approach requirements and about how much it would cost. I know your staff is so busy so I hope you don’t mind me asking. If Matt can’t, no problem, please just let me know.

I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner, but we took a long weekend and we are down in Clearwater, FL.

That communication was written by Judi Boyko West Chester Township Administrator. Here is the actual email, just so it cannot be said that what has been stated is a fiction.

Now, with what you have seen here, go back and watch the collection of videos above so you can listen to the West Chester Trustees for yourself. Notice how Trustee Wong uses the standard progressive mode of class warfare when he can’t answer Trustee Lang’s questions. Anyone who lives outside of West Chester would find it absolutely laughable that Wong would even attempt to describe Beckett Ridge as a community of less economic statues. But, these are the standard progressive arguments no matter what the situation, and the facts speak for themselves.

Mr. Cho in the end got his crosswalk. The cement was dry before the final meeting was concluded. It is my opinion that all the trustees were extremely nice about the entire ordeal, especially Trustee Lang. I can’t say I would have been so sympathetic. My suggestion to Mr. Cho, the self-professed pinball of the treacherous Beckett Ridge pinball machine would have been to wrap him in bubble wrap for his own protection so he could bounce off all those cars without causing injury to himself, or the cars.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

American Families Lost 40% of their Wealth: The little bits of socialism in West Chester

I received a Twitter feed the other day indicating American families had lost 40% of their wealth during the recession (depression) that occurred from 2007 to 2010. The same people who are scratching their heads now wondering how this has happened are still not talking about the obvious problem in Europe where similar numbers are being reported. The common problem that permeates all the economies involved in this world-wide recession is a global commitment to socialism that has caused these losses, yet nobody will call it out by name.

The depression of 2007 to present has been caused by socialism and the commitment to Keynesian economics. For the same reason that academics have been reluctant to reveal scientific discoveries that shatter their previously published studies, academics have been very reluctant to take responsibility for their commitment to socialism and communism in our public schools. Millions of college students have went through communism basic training in college, and are now expected to function in a capitalist economy, and they don’t know how—so the American economy is failing, because education failed The United States population, just as it has the people of Europe. European socialists actually expect to retire at age 55 only to become leeches for the second half of their lives off their collective societies.

To provide an example of how socialism has impacted our local economy I’ll repeat a story I heard from a business owner while having lunch the other day. The owner complained to me that he had advertised for his business in his parking lot on Sundays, just like many of his neighboring businesses have; only he was stunned to find that one of the zoning employees for the Township of West Chester cited him for the infraction. The owner asked why he was being picked on instead of the other businesses, and there wasn’t a good answer, because it is a commitment to socialism that the young zoning employees are committed to, not capitalism, and this particular business was being targeted because two of the three trustees of West Chester do not like the kind of people who come to this particular business, so regulation is used to make the act of doing business difficult. The politicians involved hope that the owner will eventually give up and go out of business. So in this way, local politics can pick winners and losers and those who want to stay in business learn that if they want to play ball, they have to grease some squeaky wheels in politics.

There are 5 zoning employees in West Chester, most of them hired during the building boom of the last decade. Many of them are no longer needed, but because they are government employees, they are nearly impossible to get rid of, so now they have nothing to do but create needless regulation and enforce those regulations on the businesses they see their bosses—the trustees—do not approve of, so they can maintain their jobs and appear to be effective. In this case none of the individual players are evil. But the system they are functioning under is socialism, and the collective nature of that philosophy is evil, because it allows a hierarchy class to pick winners and losers. In the case of the business owner I was having lunch with, he was being punished for being the “wrong” kind of business as determined by the hierarchy of two out of three West Chester trustees and the zoning employees were using regulation to decide what kind of business succeeds or fails in West Chester.

http://www.westchesteroh.org/CDPlanning.cfm

This isn’t just isolated to West Chester where zoning employees use regulation to control the flow of business. Just to the north in Liberty Twp, a Frisch’s restaurant that is due to open in August of 2012 experienced similar harassment. That restaurant almost didn’t happen because the builders were at odds with the zoning employee in Liberty Twp over whether or not that particular restaurant could have the famous Big Boy statue in front of their store. A regulation created by Jonathan West who is heavily petitioned against by several builders to be removed from power because of his open abuse of building investment in the region prevented the construction of the new Frisch’s for well over a year basically due to the issue of the famous statue. This same Liberty Twp zoning employee has went to great trouble going around the township harassing businesses in the same way that West Chester zoning employees have.

I’ve spoke to non business residents about these zoning issues and they almost always say to me, “but if it wasn’t for zoning, those greedy builders could do whatever they want and would only get richer.” And there you have it. That is the cause of the 40% loss in American wealth—the American people have been taught to distrust businessmen and business women, corporations, builders, developers, inventors, anyone who is rich—they are all targets from all the little socialists who seek government jobs and a lifetime of justifying their jobs with coercion sucking up to the political class. In the case of the zoning employees, it is the majority rule on the Township trustee boards who decides what businesses will be heavily regulated and which will not just like cops pull over sports cars with young 25-year-old men more often than the middle-aged tax payer in a “family car,” because the regulation is a “nudge” created by the collective to help shape society into the vision of the political class. The trustees have to show the community that they are doing tasks the voters can see, so they use regulation to give themselves performance measures and they use those same regulations to pick successful businesses and failed businesses. The zoning people just like the police “enforce” the law of politicians so that socialism can grow.

None of this is intentional. Human beings do what they are taught, and unfortunately for more than 40 years, socialism has been taught to the American people, and they have accepted it thinking they were being patriotic American citizens. They did not see the red flag of the Soviet Union, or China, so they did not think they were advocating socialism on a clear path to communism when they embraced the tyrannical polices of township trustees and their zoning employees. But it is socialism that makes the cost of doing business either prohibitive or conducive, and if a business is out of favor with the “political class” even in a conservative area like West Chester or Liberty Twp they will be put out of business with excessive court costs and fines. There is simply too much government that have their hands in too many businesses, and there are too many people who believe that regulation protects them from “greedy” rich people who just want to make money.

Schools have taught generations of young people who “making money” is a bad, evil act. Yet the world is shocked when they learn that socialism in Europe is bankrupting the Eurozone and America has lost 40% of it’s wealth in just 4 short years. Lack of wealth creation is the natural byproduct of having an anti-wealth creation mentality in society, and most Americans are just a little bit guilty of accepting socialism without realizing they are accepting a parasitic political philosophy that is inadvertently destroying their lives. But the guiltiest of this serious crime are those who know better, but advance socialism anyway because they consider themselves good little Democrats, progressives, ex-hippies, or civil rights crusaders. They refuse to admit to themselves that it is their political philosophy that is ruining the world, and they deny the fact to themselves. They are no different from the overweight person who claims to be on a diet and orders a tremendous amount of fattening food at a restaurant but justifies their diet by ordering a “diet” soda. Those same types of people claim they are committed to capitalism, yet they want huge government employee expansion, wonderful federal pensions, and short—nonproductive work hours—then they wonder why no wealth has been created and businesses are failing. They also wonder why nobody is stepping forward to start a business when they have zoned land to attract such development. The reason is socialism. More often than not, the zoning administrator who drives around on a Sunday afternoon picking on businesses who break their zoning regulations are making more money than the owners of such businesses by the time the business owner follows all the federal regulations, state regulations, and community regulations, then pays for their accountants, their attorney fees and pads the pockets of the local politicians by donating tremendous amounts of money to the charities in fashion at the time. It is the little socialist government zoning worker who sits at their desk all day maintaining their Facebook accounts and little else who make much more money at the end of the day while the business owner worries each night before he goes to bed how he can stay open for one more day, or one more week.

Hmmmmm, I wonder why America is losing its wealth?

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Moai of Easter Island HAVE BODIES: More unlocked mysteries for the human race

For many years the mysterious statues of Easter Island have been shrouded in secrecy. Over 1000 Easter Island statues litter the tiny island completely devoid of trees and life. These statues have been best known to be giant heads sitting on the surface of the island and defied logic because many of them were so large they would have required thousands of human beings to maneuver the giant statues.

The pictures shown here are from the Easter Island Statue Project website, www.eisp.org where they have managed to excavate two of those giant statues and discovered that the only part of the statues seen were not just heads sitting haphazardly across the surface of Easter Island, but that the heads had bodies with torsos over 7 m tall. This is an astonishing archeological discovery. It is further evidence that life in the ancient South Pacific was not a primitive one, but a very sophisticated society capable of great technology, sophisticated religion, and multicultural cooperation. For more information see my article on Malden Island. CLICK HERE.

As archeologists excavated these giant statues they found that the tall bodies actually rested on a kind of pavement many feet below the earth’s surface, and many theories of the Eastern Island people were shattered. We were to believe that a primitive people left South America in canoes traveling 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile across the Pacific Ocean to arrive at a tiny island that could be missed easily with an airplane. To find such an island with a boat is an extraordinary feat, but to find it and begin erecting these giant statues for no particular reason defies logic. The revelation that most of these statues have been buried beneath more than 15 feet of soil indicates a truly spectacular geological disaster that would have covered the island with sediment on a scale that was epic. But in so doing, it preserved a lifestyle that might have otherwise been wiped away from the earth forever with natural erosion.

This archeological discovery is just more proof that much of what we believe we have achieved in human science, has not yet began to scratch the surface. The statues on Easter Island have been available for study for over 100 years, yet it is only now that we have discovered that they have these vast complicated bodies submerged below the ground of the island. The question begs to be answered, if such large statues were ignored for over 100 years under heavy scientific scrutiny, and the terrain was so easily altered upon which the sculpture of the Eastern Island statues existed, then what lost relics exist upon the earth that are completely lost to human eyes and have yet to be discovered?

As I look at the photos of these statues that I have gazed upon all my life, and I note that what I saw was only a fraction of the overall statue, as most existed under the surface it serves as a metaphor for our infantile science that is only scratching the possibilities of understanding that await mankind. The statues themselves are situated on the triangular-shaped island upon the rim of a volcano of which the island has three, Rano Kau, Maunga Terevaka and Katiki. Easter Island once bestowed lush vegetation and timber, but today that is all but gone. Seeing how the statues are buried now makes me think that one of the three volcanoes erupted violently killing all life on the island including the vegetation. The soil compositions burying the statues so deeply are probably the result of many volcanic eruptions and tsunamis that rushed into the craters of the dead volcanoes and flooded them.

Now that archeologists have dug to the bottom of these statues to the original plaza of these temples which apparently housed these statues geologists should be able to properly date the Easter Island culture, which I predict will now be several thousand years old instead of the original date somewhere between AD 400 to AD 690. The statues were called moai and range in weight from 20 tons to 90 tons. Some are up to 32 ft tall. The complexity of the statues are odd for such a remote island, but if taken in the context of the nearby Malden Island appear to be a part of a very vast and complicated network of Polynesian societies that were far more advanced than previously thought.

Once the Eastern Island culture was destroyed centuries of new settlers made the island home, some of which were cannibals, and it would appear that European travelers encountering Easter Island for the first time assumed that it was a version of the cannibals who had built the Easter Island statues. The statues seen in the photographs here are from the quarry at Rano Raraku. It cannot be ignored how these seemingly primitive groups of human beings were so obsessed with moving vast stone works. Such a mystery was difficult to imagine before it was revealed that the statues were much larger than originally thought. Now the prospect is simply mind bending.

A similar assumption was made at Serpent Mound, Ohio where early archeology quick to report findings for their universities, and thus validate their scientific funding determined that it was the Adena Indians who had built the strange mound structure on the rim of a cryptoexplosion dating 248 million to 286 million years ago. Cryptoexplosions are extremely rare on planet earth and are debated to be caused by meteor impacts or volcanic forces from under the earth’s crust. The builders of Serpent Mound appeared to understand in a primitive time where no society could have known what happened more than 200 million years ago, that the ground upon which mound was built was very unique. More archeological research has been conducted over the last couple of decades and Serpent Mound appears to be much older than originally thought, well into the thousands of years ago. The Adena Indians simply did as apparently the cannibals of Easter Island did, they settled the area long after the original builders had left or been destroyed and were given credit for being the descendents of the original culture.

There is a yearning to display the learned power and command over natural resources that just is not evident in primitive, collective societies at the Easter Island archeological site at Rano Raraku. The ability to find a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and build these tremendous standing statues is the work of more than nomads or hunters and gatherers. The recent discoveries at Easter Island is further proof that we are simply on page one in understanding the vast history of the human race that has been hidden by education monopolies, religious insistence, and human impatience to quickly smash the world’s facts into the meat grinder of domestic understanding. Ultimately the answer was always right in front of us, as it usually is. But it took someone to actually do some digging to get “to the bottom of it” so to speak, and discover that there is much more to the story than we ever thought, or conceived.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

What Mitt Romney Should Do in Cincinnati: Visit the “Grand Ole Pub”

Members of Mitt Romney’s team were out ahead of the his visit to Cincinnati looking for spots to present his platform to Southern Ohio voters. They wisely stopped by the Grand Ole Pub in West Chester, Ohio checking that wonderful establishment as a possible stop on the Romney campaign trail. I heard this while dining with friends for lunch at the Grand Ole Pub and admired that it showed some real understanding of West Chester politics from the Romeny team. For those who don’t know about the Grand Ole Pub, here is their website.

http://www.grandolepub.com/

So a note to team Romney, if your schedule doesn’t allow for a trip to the Grand Ole Pub on this most recent June trip, you will want to make a visit there on an upcoming stop in Ohio. It is well known throughout the entire country that the south eastern corner of Butler County is one of the most conservative and constitutionally hungry voting districts in the entire nation and the Grand Ole Pub is one of the favorite dining establishments of the two major Cincinnati Tea Party groups that are only seperated by 5 miles.

If Mitt Romney wants to touch the pulse of Southern Ohio politics, he must stop by the Grand Ole Pub. His potential voters love the Grand Ole Pub and he will too!

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

Teacher’s Threaten to Strike in Chicago: The big labor union show with a puppet mayor

Does anyone remember when President Obama told America right after his election in 2008 that The United States had a lot to learn from Europe, and that we should strive to be more like them as a nation? Now, as Spain is begging for a financial bailout, Greece is locked in a civil war in the it’s streets between the communists and Nazi parties, France is collapsing under it’s newly elected socialist president and Italy is failing especially in their economy and is not far behind Spain. When President Obama pointed at Europe and stated that The United States should be more like them, he was saying that it was socialism that America needed to emulate, and within four years of open socialism from the start of Obama’s presidency to the end of it, Europe is collapsing under economic failures directly created by the small little book called The Communist Manifesto. Those who followed the economic policies of Karl Marx have led their nations to financial ruin.

In America, thankfully not quite too late, some are beginning to see the socialist tendencies being taught in our schools and openly advocated by our government. Some in the Tea Party movements and other liberty groups are beginning to fight back in an attempt to save the capitalism that built America from the encroachment of communism. Most notably, the recall election in Wisconsin to remove Scott Walker as governor was the grand attempt by socialist labor unions to maintain their grip on economic power and dedication to expand socialism to every corner of the world.

Yet in the city of Chicago, President Obama’s favorite city, it is socialism that rules still as the teachers union for the Chicago Public School system voted by a margin of more than 75% of it’s members to impose a potential strike in mid-August 2012 if the CPS management cannot come to contract terms with the Chicago Teacher’s Union which expires on June 30th 2012. You can read the announcement of this strike at the website of Progress Illinois seen below, which is Illinois version of Progress Ohio. (Special note, all such “progress” groups are essentially socialist/communist advocates. They use the name “progress” to hide their real intentions, which is to follow the path of Europe. So beware of them all. They are anti-capitalist—and therefore anti-American.)

http://progressillinois.com/posts/content/2012/06/11/whats-next-after-ctu-strike-authorization-vote

It is clear in this proposed Chicago teachers strike why the unions are against voucher schools and privately run schools, because under capitalism, if free enterprise were involved in education, the government schools would not be able to maintain a monopoly and tactics like these massive teacher strikes would not work, because parents would have options in case their children’s school teachers did strike.

The issues that the CTU wish to strike over are of course wages. Currently, the average wage rate for CTU teachers is $69,000 and under the new contract the CTU wants a 29% increase over that amount. Another stipulation is the teachers of the CTU are upset that the teacher work day will increase by ten percent from 420 minutes to 460 minutes a day. At 460 minutes of contracted work, that comes out to a work day of 7.6 hours. The audacity of such expectations is that those CTU employees are so incredibly out of touch from what the average American is experiencing that they don’t see that such an expectation is ridiculously foolish. The CTU employees are suffering from the same inflated viewpoint that citizens in Europe expect which is bankrupting the entire Euro zone.

The first thing any rational person would ask when listening to the CTU demands is how on earth could they expect in this day and age to succeed with this insane, and unprecedented strike attempt. Well, the answer is in whom the mayor of Chicago is, the former White House Obama heel licker Rahm Emanuel, who at his heart is a big time progressive, pro union advocate. The union leaders of the CTU would like the public to believe they are locked in a mortal battle with the Mayor Emanuel, but I will declare this—that the whole thing is a political stunt and the Mayor is in on the act.

Emanuel and the labor leaders of the CTU plan to allow the threat of a strike to percolate and gain media attention during the summer of 2012, and at the last-minute, Emanuel and the union leaders will strike a deal, and both parties will declare victory over the charade imposed upon the tax payers of Chicago. Their combined hopes, along with the White House are that unions all over America will use Chicago as an example of strength and follow with the same type of strike attempts in every city in the nation. The unions desire a victory after the paralyzing loss in Wisconsin so they are staging one in Chicago with the progressive Mayor Emanuel to prove that the extortion attempts of old still work, before the unions lose all their members due to ineffectiveness.

The goal for all involved is not to bring relief to the tax payers of Chicago or even to help one single child, but to spread the socialism which is crushing Europe all over America. The unions realize that they must move fast, or they will be completely out of power within a few years, so they need to radicalize their base with a victory in Chicago, which Rahm Emanuel is poised to give them.

The fight in Chicago is nothing more than a WWF wrestling match. The victors are already determined, and are simply staging a fight on behalf of the American people. The staged fight is designed to breathe life into unions bent over with defeat as tax payers everywhere are beginning to fight back. Progressive know that if they don’t rally their troops now, it will be over for them in America very soon, because Europe is failing miserably under socialism/communism and the dream of a communist worldwide utopia so fantasized by the political left for so many years is quickly evaporating like a puddle of water on a sidewalk in Columbia, South America. It is communism that these progressives on both sides of the Chicago labor dispute desire, only they won’t tell the taxpayers that. What they show is a mayor who must come to the negotiating table with the CTU, forced there by the threat of a strike, to negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement and preserve the union way of life into the future. Their attempt is as futile as the fools of Europe marching in the streets and setting police officers on fire to protest free government support for their lazy, unproductive lives. And such a description is the antithesis of your local school teacher who complains that $69,000 a year is not enough money for only working 7.8 hours a day.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

The Film Industry Bubble: Mello Yello pays me a visit before “Prometheus”

After my article a few weeks ago on the soft drink, Mello Yello the marketing team noticed and contacted me to let me know they appreciated my dedication to their product. You can see their comments from that first contact at the bottom of that posting.I have only ever drank one kind of soft drink, and that is Mello Yello, so I was particularly impressed to come home on Friday to a box from the Coca Cola company in Atlanta, Georgia. Inside the box were a number of Mello Yello marketing items that the company had sent me that made a good day even better.

They sent me a T-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a hat, a pen, a notebook, and a thank you note, which meant a lot coming from a company that I have silently been very loyal to for a number of years. I had just enough time to open the box and scan through the items before getting ready to take my kids and their significant others out to the movie theater to see the long-awaited Prometheus. So I put on my new Mello Yello T-shirt, and my Mello Yello hat, and I grabbed the Mello Yello notebook with pen to give to my oldest daughter, and we left for the movie.

Of course I looked like a walking billboard for Mello Yello when my daughter let me into their townhouse where I gave her the notebook. She tends to write almost as much as I do, so I knew she would put it to good use. I also knew my kids would get a kick out of seeing all the Mello Yello gear, because in our family, it’s well known my love of Mello Yello. We don’t all get together as easily as we used to because we all have busy lives, so getting the Mello Yello clothing in time for our long-planned movie was a nice addition to a wonderful evening.

For Prometheus my wife wanted to see it on the IMAX screen at Showcase Cinemas in Springdale, which I think is the best movie screen in the Cincinnati area. Of course the film was in 3D like they all are these days, just like film producers promised when they flew me out to Los Angeles a few years ago to do a fire whip sequence and prove out the use of a 3D camera system for Real D 3D with Peter Facinelli. I had at that time a lot of skepticism that audiences would flock to theaters to put on 3D glasses and watch a movie with just a little extra thrill factor. Women who go out on dates spending a lot of time fixing up their hair just right I didn’t think would be interested in putting on glasses that would smear their make-up. People who naturally wear glasses have to now look through two glasses to see anything in a 3D movie, which is a pain in the neck. But Hollywood was committed to the idea of 3D just prior to Obama becoming president because they were pushed by theaters owners all over the United States to justify their investments in state of the art projection systems, giant theaters, and comfortable seating.

Hollywood like the education industry is facing the same kind of economic bubble that the housing industry has already experienced, and it’s bursting. In Hollywood, it was the films of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in the 1980’s that set the modern idea of what a “blockbuster” was. Every year since the release of E.T. and the last of the original Star Wars films Hollywood has tried to copy the box office numbers of those films by pushing for larger stunts, larger and louder explosions, and faster paced film techniques driven largely by the music video generation created by MTV. Most of the films Hollywood produce each year falls short of executive expectations, but the pressure has been on for quite some time to get larger box office totals as the entertainment unions have driven up the financial expectations higher and higher. Leading actors now for a picture make between $20 million to $30 million, so budgets for a typical summer blockbuster are now up over $150 million dollars routinely. Hollywood has increasingly had to rely on overseas sales to complement their box office take domestically in order to justify their massive up front investments. Revenue streams are changing for the industry as well, as ticket prices have went up to compensate the increasingly high budgets for films, technology has made it so people can often watch films at home more comfortably than at a movie theater. Just the other day I was at Wal-Mart where I looked at a beautiful 70” big screen LCD television that was just over $2,000 dollars. Hollywood now has to find a way to give people an experience at the theater that they can’t get at home, so 3D is their solution. And it’s failing.

I say 3D is failing not with pleasure in my voice, but sadness. I love the movie theater experience, which is why I made a tremendous ritual of taking all my kids to a movie and spending $100 on tickets that cost over $15 each to see Prometheus with my Mello Yello gear on to create memories that will last a lifetime. I wanted them to have a great night out at the movies where going to the theater is like going to a sacred mythic temple as modern mythology is bestowed upon the moviegoer.

Prior to our film beginning I watched the previews for the newest rendition of Spiderman, and Batman, and half a dozen 3D extravaganzas that I could see will end up in the same scrap heap as Battleship and John Carter. It’s not to say that those films are bad, or don’t have a market niche to fill, but studios are forced to spend over $100 million to make those films because of expectations, and ticket prices are simply too high, most people will wait to watch those films on video, or Netflix. Every movie cannot be Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, or The Avengers. Most Hollywood producers are fearful to attempt these days to develop original material because the risk is simply too great. Even a popular book like John Carter may not be enough to guarantee success. As I watched the previews prior to Prometheus, I knew that 75% of those films would be box office disappointments. They were dead before they have even arrived, because of the laws of quality described in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The Hollywood producers and entertainment agents more than ever are chasing dreams like the founders of California’s gold rush. They are digging for gold where it’s been discovered instead of looking where nobody has discovered it yet, because they are functioning in the back of the “train” so to speak.

Needless to say the film I took my family to Prometheus was spectacular, and it should have been for $100 bucks. I had no regrets in seeing that movie especially since everyone enjoyed the film tremendously. But as I stood in the lobby of Showcase Cinemas afterward in my bright yellow Mello Yello gear a wave of sadness swept over me realizing that the financial structure that made the whole movie theater business run was about to bust. Prometheus represented the best that Hollywood had to offer, and at $15 dollars a ticket, it barely seemed worth it. I can’t image paying that kind of price for a lesser movie, yet the movie industry is counting on it, and they will be disappointed.

The same holds true in the movie industry as it does with President Obama not understanding that European economic models built around socialism is the cause of their failure, and The United States allowing for a mixed economy of a little socialism here and there sprinkled with bits of capitalism is what has caused Obama’s failed economy during his presidency. He’s as clueless as the typical film executive who will find themselves out of a job in a couple of years because their films failed to meet the market expectations. Hollywood is looking for the Justice League to fill the market void of George Lucas retiring. That was on my mind because just a few days before Mello Yello sent me all that merchandise I received a press release from Lucasfilm stating Lucas was officially retiring, and that Kathleen Kennedy was stepping in to help fill the void at that billion dollar film company. Kennedy is a long time assistant to many Spielberg films and now she’s going to work full-time at Lucasfilm. This is a serious indication that Hollywood’s creative core is aging, and moving on to other things, and the next generations of Hollywood filmmakers and other above-the-line talent are functioning from the back of Pirsig’s quality train, and will fail under the heavy expectations.

I thought it was appropriate that I was wearing a Mello Yello T-shirt on a night when I was having all these thoughts. Way back in 1994 and 1995 I wanted to buy a Mello Yello T-shirt, but then frustrated executives at Coca Cola were upset that the soft drink did not perform equivalent to Mountain Dew, so they pulled the drink for a bit and changed it to the soft drink “Serge,” so I didn’t get my Mello Yello shirt. This went on for a while until executives at the Coca Cola Company realized that this would not boost their sales, so they had sacrificed a very good drink just because it arrived late to the marketing gate, and if they had held strong, they might have made real gains through the late 90’s into the next century. Mello Yello made its triumphant return slowly, and is just now beginning to be purchased in the northern states of America. The same day I went to Wal-Mart to see the big screen television, they had three 12 packs of Mello Yello on their shelf. My wife bought all three of them. A couple of years ago, Wal-Mart in Ohio did not carry Mello Yello at all.

Mello Yello has always been a great drink, but it was judged based on the blockbuster success of Mountain Dew, and it suffered as a result. The same thing is about to happen in the film industry. Many films will suffer as film executives lose their jobs in the years to come due to the entertainment bubble collapsing under the enormous weight of expectation. And like Mello Yello, I have my brands of filmmakers that I support valiantly, and Ridley Scott is one of them. When my “brands” make a film that I know they poured their heart and soul into it, I go and see them. The next film I feel passionate about will be Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. I will pay top dollar to see that movie as a kind of vote for what I think success in a movie should be, to help curb the disappointment from an industry that expects too much, and is collapsing under inflated opinions. Twenty years from now, like my previous twenty years of supporting Mello Yello, I’m sure some of these very good film studios will re-emerge from the wreckage that is about to become of the film industry, and I’ll be there to support them as I was to see the great film Prometheus and one of the great offerings of the year from 20th Century Fox.

I proudly put my Mello Yello gear away when I got home that night and contemplated all that you read here today. And because of that, it means more to me than the moment that I opened it. In capitalism, whether it’s a movie, or a soft drink, the idea came from the mind of a capitalist, and millions of people enjoy the results of those thoughts—and every instance is a thing of beauty. I cherish Mello Yello because it’s been through so much as a company and even with all that, they still have the swagger about them to send me a box full of Mello Yello fun on the eve of taking my family to see the film Prometheus. It was an evening of ideas, and capitalism, and crushing expectations. But at the end of the day, it is the ideas that burn not so much brightest, but longest that survive. And Mello Yello survives, in the same way that many others will endure as great minds who think at the front of the train emerge to give great ideas a place to materialize. Each time I wear my Mello Yello T-shirt, it will not be out of blind devotion to a soft drink, but out of reverence to a company that I cherish because it makes a great product, and has had the tenacity to weather the storms of economic betrayal to arrive at a day when it can please the taste buds of millions.

____________________________________________________________

This is what people are saying about my new book–Tail of the Dragon

“Just finished the book and am sweating profusely. Wow, what a ride !!! Fasten your seat belts for one of the most thrilling rides ever in print.“

Visit the NEW Tail of the Dragon WEBSITE! CLICK HERE!

Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

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